You people should read "Animal Farm" by George Orwell.
You'll soon learn that the way the world works is very simple. There are those in charge who get their position by stealth combined with ruthlessness. The sole purpose of society is designed for their benefit.
When people of good faith and sincere humane beliefs which you espouse revolt and succeed naturally their are those who have greater ability among you and not all of them once they achieve positions of trust will remain pure to the original ideals of the revolution. Bastards and traitors basically! but no matter what you do they'll be there waiting for their chance!
No matter how wary any of you will be you will not able to stop devious people such as these most of the time just as now you are trying and usually failing to defeat the clearly unjust capitalist system.
But Hey people ain't everything unjust! Life is a heap of Shit! You just gotta motor on doing your best but don't whip a dead horse! Communism and anarchy don't work!They tried it Russia And China and they fucked up!
I really think that we can influence things by getting jobs as low wage earners while meanwhile earning a qualification in university. Once you have a qualification what ever it may be you can get a job. Starting at the bottom we can worker or way up the promotion ladder and become leaders.
When we are leaders other leaders have to bargain with us.
If we bargain shrewdly we get what we want.
If we remain humane and true to our beliefs then we can change society. It will take time and maybe we won't succeed but standing in the street getting hit by a truncheon will never work. you must rise to the position of control over the police by occupying a political position.
If people don't listen to your demands you will have to compromise to get at least some of what you want.
Ask any politician of the established political parties in any democratic country of the world and they will tell you thats how they got involved. Ask Jacques Chirac even!
I don't want you people to think i'm bashing you but i'm not nor am i deliberately patrinizing.
Keep up the good work!

You're argument that communism is open to corruption is true, but the same applies to capitalism! (evidently). So you saying we should all climb the political ladder is not a good idea, in my humble opinion, as it was once said that as soon as you get a taste of power it can corrupt you also.
We don't all want to get jobs and work our way up, especially now when we realise that we're all being exploited it's going to be very hard to do as we'll have zero enthusiam for our jobs, unless they are doing something worthwhile rather than the usual office production line route.
Anarchism hasn't been tried anywhere as far as I know (apart from small communities in Spain), and I wish people would stop using China and USSR as examples of communism! China is state owned capitalism (they are joining the WTO, how very communist!) and I think USSR was also. The point is they didn't/don't practice communism to the true ideals of Marx, well not after a while anyway. Another thing, they never made it to communism, communism is the final state of absolute socialism, which was never achieved.
I don't see why you couldn't have a socialist system where people can vote out their leaders in elections if they aren't happy with them, (which also hasn't happened yet, and of course, if you want leaders at all).
Your point about getting no where by being hit round a head with a truncheon making no difference is also false, as if the protesters are there in numbers and are mainly peaceful, the media has no choice but to report on what we're protesting/demonstrating about, albeit dumbed down. Anyway the mayday appearing on TV two years ago made me take an interest in all this in the first place, and made me find out what capitalism is all about and what the alternatives are.
I do agree with you in some places though, about making a difference in mainstream politics, (this is a bit of a contradiction on what I said in the first paragraph but hey) as I would rather have a party like the Greens running the country than the lot we have now, and I think a party of this kind can open all the doors to the general public on anarchism, socialism etc rather than just brushing it under the carpet as something that has failed in the past. Surely making something like this happen is more effective than deciding not to vote?
So we can do both, we can show our views through protest or the ballot box, I'm sure some people would rather just have the former, but we must think hard about both these things, and stick together. These kind of differences is what events like Marxism 2002 is trying to resolve by debate, right?
In the words of Minor Threat, "you tell me, I'll make no difference, at least I'm fucking trying, what the fuck have you done?"
Sorry this is so long, I had a lot to say.

I love the way the SWP get trade union leaders to give talks on rank and file movements...

can claim to hold authentic Marxist views at all. There is much to suggest that they are falling into a pattern often witnessed when the socialist movement has suffered serious defeats and setbacks in the past, such as in 1914 (when the International failed to stop war) and in 1924 (when Trotsky messed it up and got beat by Stalin). Certainly, they sound very much like the early Stalinists did, when the party had given up on new victories, lost its way and began to perpetuate itself as an end in itself. By linking themselves so closely to the Labour party and therefore state power, they may end the same way as the Second International. While deifying the Bolshevik leaders, Tony Cliff actually refuted much of what they stood for and propagated his own lesser theories(just as did Stalin in the 1920s). Whenever anyone criticises the SWP or its sub-groups, there is no serious debate, just ridicule, insults and threats of violence (very Stalinist).
It is important for non-Marxists (such as most who read Indymedia) to understand all this, because opinions can change and they must have the right to make a clear-headed assessment of Marxism-Leninism, whereas the SWP may put them off completely.

The title for the gathering is now "Marxism 20 - 02", which is an estimate of the number of idiots expected to turn up for a weekend of haraguing...

Rick you are a fuckwit - you said: "Communism and anarchy don't work!They tried it Russia And China and they fucked up!" They didn't try that, all power was controlled by the ruling one-party system, while they called it communism, it is in fact state-capitalism.

And how can a dictatorship be communist or anarchist??

I was there last year. You can read my account at:

 http://www.infoshop.org/texts/iso.html

along with other critiques of Marxism.

Simply put, the meetings I went to were marked by a
lack of real debate. Take the one Pat Stack did on
"Anarchism" -- he lied for 45 minutes and then we
had 10 slots of 3 minutes to correct his nonsense.
Which is impossible, as intended.

But still, it was worth going to hand out anarchist
literature on how Stack lies about anarchism and why
Leninism is not "socialism from below." I doubt I
had much effect on the party hacks, but hopefully
some of the newer members started to question the
honesty and politics of their party.

You will soon be pissed off listening to middle-class, bored and boring idiots. There are a few good pubs around Euston. Find one and spend the time meeting people who live on the planet Earth instead of the muppets of the SWP.